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This is the People's Democracy
"This is the People's Democracy" was the 41st Special Comment delivered on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airing on 19 January 2009 on the evening before the inauguration of Barack Obama. The Comment Finally tonight, as promised, a special comment about the president-elect, the soon to be president emeritus, torture and its prosecution. We have tortured people, you and I. This is the people's democracy. We are the people. These are our elected officials. That they did not come to us and ask to act thusly in our names is unfortunate, indeed criminal, but it is also almost irrelevant. The work for us - they work for us and they tortured people, and so we have tortured people. You and I know we have tortured Khalid Sheik Mohammad. We not only know about it. We have now heard it boasted about by one of the men who, as of tomorrow, will no longer work for us, George Walker Bush. "The techniques were necessary and are necessary to be used on a rare occasion to get information necessary to protect the American people," Mr. Bush said to Fox News on January 11th. "One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheik Mohammad. I'm in the Oval Office. I'm told that we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammad and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I asked what tools are available for us to find information from him. They give me a list of tools. And I said are these tools deemed to be legal. We got legal opinions before the decision was made. "I think when people study the history of this particular episode, they will find out we gained good information from Khaled Sheik Mohammad in order to protect our country. We believe that the information we gained helped save lives on American soil." Never mind Mr. Bush's delusions here, never mind all primary sources who witnessed the interrogation of Khaled Sheik Mohammad said they got nothing from him until they started buddying up to him, never mind that Mr. Bush's supporters' favorite torture construction, the mythical ticking time bomb scenario not only did not transpire here, but Mr. Bush has not even had the imagination to pretend it did just in order to slightly cover his moral tracks. The key is that this statement, if it had been under oath, would have been a confession to a war crime. Mr. Bush is proactive. "I asked what tools are available." Mr. Bush is aware of the legal haze in which he steps. "And I said, are these tools deemed to be legal." Mr. Bush realizes the tools he has chosen have been used. "We gained good information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed." Since we know from previous admissions at the Pentagon that Khaled Sheik Mohammad was water boarded, we can infer that Mr. Bush knew he would be water boarded and knew afterwards that he had been water boarded. Mr. Bush is guilty. He is guilty as sin. Mr. President-elect, you were first asked about all this on the 18th of April last. I am proud to say you were asked about it by a fellow who got onto his high school newspaper while I was the editor. Will Bunch of the "Philadelphia Daily News." "I think you are right," you told him. "If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You are also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we have too many problems we have to solve. So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment." Good. Amen. But in that brief interview was born, or at least elucidated, a loop hole, genuine crimes, as opposed to really bad policies. Vice President Biden echoed this on December 21st, a statement to which your transition team has directed all those to whom this is a paramount issue. He said, "the questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very bad judgment has been engaged in is something the Justice Department decides." After his comment last week, with straight forwardness that was like water to a lost soul in the Sahara, that water boarding is torture, your nominee at Justice, Mr. Holder, echoed all this. "We don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist between the out-going administration and the administration that is about to take over." But, Mr. president-elect, you have a confession. Since this statement of a structure of policy prefacing policy itself from Mr. Biden, you have had Mr. Bush's confession. Moreover, since Mr. Biden's statement, you have a legal assessment from within the bowels of the Bush administration itself. "We tortured Mohammad al Qahtani," Judge Susan Crawford told the "Washington Post" a week ago. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture." That was why, Judge Crawford added, that as the Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether or not to bring detainees at Guantanamo Bay in trial, she decided in Qhatani's case not to. This, Mr. president elect, was not the obvious water boarding of Khaled Sheik Mohammad. This was a more insidious combination of legally approved procedures that still nearly killed this man Qhatani. "The techniques were all authorized," Judge Crawford continued, " but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. This was not any one particular act. It was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health." In fact, Mr. president-elect, the records at Gitmo showed that Qhatani's heartbeat eventually slowed to 35 beats per minute. "It was abusive and uncalled for and coercive, clearly coercive. I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11 not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe. But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. Unfortunately, what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward." If you are worried about the Republicans viewing any torture prosecution in the way you postulated to Will Bunch, a partisan witch hunt, you can remind them that woman who said all that, Susan Crawford, is a life-long Republican. So Mr. President-elect, beyond whatever else will come out, as the whistle blowers begin to just after noon tomorrow, you have your predecessor's unofficial confession and you have this singular evaluation by a principle in your predecessor's administration, this kind of line level confession. They are guilty of this, Mr. president-elect. They are guilty as sin. Since he talked to my friend Bunch in April, Mr. Obama's only lengthy comments about this were made to George Stephanopoulos on January 11th of this year. See if a disturbing theme becomes evident. "Obviously, we are going to be looking at past practices. I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward, as opposed to looking backwards." Later, "my instinct is to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing." Later still, "my orientation is going to be to move forward." Finally, "what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past." Sadly, as commendable as the intention here might seem, this country has never succeeded in moving forward without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past. In point of fact, every effort to merely draw a line in the sand and declare the past dead has served only to keep the past alive and often to strengthen it. We compromised with slavery in the Declaration of Independence. And four score and nine years later, we had buried 600,000 of sons and brothers in a Civil War. After that war's ending, we compromised with the social restructuring and protection of the rights of minorities in the south. And a century later, we had not only resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in the cities of the south. We compromised with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War. Nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials then. And 19 years later, there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart-rending Second World War. We compromised with the trusts of the early 1900s. Today, we have corporations too big to fail. We compromised with the Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism. And we compromised with McCarthyism and got Watergate. We compromised with Watergate and junior members of the Ford administration realized how little was ultimately at risk. They grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. But, Mr. President elect, you are entirely correct. As you say, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past. That means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush administration's torture of prisoners and starting at the top. You are also right that you should not want your first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt. But your only other option might be let this set and fester indefinitely. Because, Mr. president elect, someday there will be another Republican president, or even a Democrat just as blind as Mr. Bush to ethics and this country's moral force. He will look back to what you did about Mr. Bush or what you did not do. And he will see precedent. Or as Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught next time. Prosecute, Mr. president-elect. Even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good for generations unborn. Merely by acting, you will deny Mr. Bush what he most wants. Right now, without prosecutions, without this nation standing up and saying this was wrong, we will atone; Mr. Bush's version of what happened goes into the historical record of this nation. Torture was legal. It worked. It saved the country. The end. We have tortured people, you and I, Mr. president-elect. This is the people's democracy. We are the people. These were our elected officials. That they did not come to us and act thusly in our names is unfortunate and indeed criminal, but it is almost irrelevant. They worked for us. They tortured people and so we have tortured people. Thus, beginning tomorrow, it is up to you, not just to discontinue this, but to prevent it. At the end of his first year in office, Mr. Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War for those who still wanted to compromise with evils of secession and slavery. "The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today. It is for a vast future also." Mr. president-elect, you have been handed the beginning of that future. Use it to protect our children and our distant descendants from anything like this ever happening again. See Also Category:2009 Special Comments